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The world’s largest carmaker by volume, Toyota, says it plans to invest $1.4 billion to build two new factories in Mexico and China.

The announcement marks an end to a three-year, self-imposed expansion freeze. The new plant in Guanajuato, Mexico, will turn out 200,000 compact Corollas per year by 2019. The plant in Guangzhou, China plans to start production in 2017 with a capacity to make around 100,000 cars a year.

The free-trade agreements between Mexico, the U.S., and Europe, coupled with Toyota’s new super-efficient global architecture has the potential to set a new competitive threshold for the car industry.

Mohammad Wasiq works at one of the hotels on Savannah’s downtown riverfront. His job is just shy of a mile and a half from his apartment - an easy bike ride. He says it usually takes him less than 10 minutes.

Before Wasiq got the bike, he had to take the bus, and that was a different story. “First ten days, I was late sometimes, sometimes early,” he says, “because I couldn’t wait for the bus so I was just walking from here.”

Wasiq’s bike came from the Savannah Bicycle Campaign’s recycling program. The group takes donations of used bikes and parts. Then volunteers refurbish them and outfit them with accessories the users might need, like racks for groceries. A refugee placement organization called Lutheran Services of Georgia connects the Bike Campaign with people who need the help. Each user gets a helmet, a lock, and a light.

Lauren Cruickshank works with the refugees. “The fact that they can get a bicycle for free means that they’re not spending money on the bicycle,” she says, “and it also means that maybe they don’t have to spend money on a bus ticket each time they’re going to their ESL class or each time they’re going to the grocery store.”

The program also offers a mobile repair trailer and helps people learn about bike maintenance. Manager Jen Colestock says that’s also key when every penny counts.

“Especially if you’re somebody who bikes by necessity, and wouldn’t necessarily be able to afford that repair at a bike shop but might have access to tools to fix it, that’s another ten, twenty, thirty dollars that you’ve saved then,” Colestock says.

A spokesperson for the League of American Bicyclists says recycling programs like this one have been around for a while, and they’ve seen a rise around the country as biking has gotten more popular. They have a lot of different goals - from increasing economic freedom to helping the environment.

"Pay securely. Here, there, anywhere." That's the slogan currently on PayPal's website, and one of the central promises for digital payments of all kinds. But so far, the promise isn't accessible "anywhere."
For instance: Nicaragua.

On the country's Pacific coast, in a remote beach town, there is a Spanish school called Pie de Gigante. It draws an international crowd to its website. But its founder, Juan Delgado, says it has sometimes failed to convert them into real-world visitors, thanks to its website's inability to let them pay online to reserve a space.

"Right now, we're using a system that's a little bit complicated," he says, speaking in Spanish. "We use a system of paying via Western Union or in cash."

PayPal isn't an option.

"In most of Latin America today, the only way you can take money out of your PayPal account is having a U.S. bank account," says Arnoldo Reyes, head of financial services and business development for PayPal in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The exceptions have required the company to navigate local regluations and to partner directly with individual banks. It's this kind of extra work that pushes companies like PayPal to focus first on bigger, wealthier markets. (Nicaragua is the second poorest country in all of Latin America, after Haiti.)

"I mean, you can't take an Uber in Nicaragua," says Reyes.

"We're basically closed off," says Marcella Chamorro, an entrepreneur who first ran into the payment problem when trying to create a kind of Nicaraguan Ticketmaster.

"I know a bunch of small business owners who need to find like a cousin in California who can open a bank account for them and then sell through PayPal to this bank account and then their aunt comes three months later to bring the cash," she says. "It's really complicated."

It makes it harder for locals than for people like Chris James--a British ex-pat who runs the Hostal El Momento in Granada, Nicaragua. He has a local, Nicaraguan bank account for cash and credit cards. But he also has a U.S. bank account, which he uses for receiving PayPal payments.

"It's easier to have both really: accounts here and out of the country as well," he says. "That's what I find anyway."

The situation has been changing. In the last few years, PayPal has partnered with local banks to make receiving payments possible in Peru, Chile, Costa Rica and--on Monday--the Dominican Republic. But as for Nicaragua, Reyes says while the country is on PayPal's radar, the company couldn't give any specific timeline.

That's how many hours of content Netflix users streamed in the first quarter of this year, according to the company's most recent earnings report released Wednesday. Quartz points out that's about 55 hours per month, per person.

3 years

That's how long Toyota's self-imposed expansion freeze. The world's largest carmaker by volume has just ended the freeze by announcing plans to invest $1.4 billion to build new factories in Mexico and China.

$16

This is how much Etsy, the online retailer platform, has been priced in its IPO. The deal raised about $267 million by selling 16.7 million shares and gives Etsy a valuation of $1.8 billion.

$6.6 billion

That's 10 percent of Google's annual sales, and the fine the tech giant could pay in an antitrust suit brought by the European Union Wednesday. The EU is accusing Google of privileging its own services in search results. New tech correspondent for Marketplace Molly Wood tells us how Google's mission makes this case somewhat inevitable, and how the company can adjust its model to get out of this.

$1.224 trillion

This is Japan’s total holding of US government debt. Now the third largest economy in the world has surpassed the second in U.S. bond holdings. According to the Financial Times, China pegs its currency to the dollar, which has recovered strongly this year. Meanwhile, growth in the Asian giant is slowing, leading it to reinvest more of its foreign earnings domestically. However, U.S. investors still remain the number one buyer of U.S. bond.

$15 per hour

The starting wage for employees at the East Village restaurant Dirt Candy, three times New York's minimum wage for tipped employees. Dirt Candy has gotten rid of tipping entirely, instead adding a 20 percent "administrative fee" to every meal. It's something of a reaction to the way tipping habits have changed, the Washington Post reported, though it's not always easy to ditch the tradition without raising prices or sacrificing service.

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